Dissent broke out in the England team this week. It lasted about half a second. Berated from the touchline for hoofing a clearance from his penalty area when under no pressure in Monday's practice match against Platinum Stars, Joe Hart went halfway through the motion of telling Fabio Capello to cool down but then remembered who he was dealing with. Goalkeeping gloves were raised in apology and surrender.

At England's training ground yesterday the talk was of Capello's eruption at half-time in the 3-0 win. The England manager steamed into the dressing room at the Moruleng Stadium, took three minutes to deliver his rebuke and then went back outside to sit alone on a row of touchline seats until his assistant, Stuart Pearce, joined him to discuss set-piece drills. Capello was by himself for at least five minutes as his replacements limbered up on the pitch.

There was a hint of Brian Clough about this parade of anger. Disgusted by Nottingham Forest's first-half display one Saturday, Clough ambled into the dressing room, lay on the physio's couch with his hands behind his head and uttered not a single word. He used a variety of tricks to spook his players into intensifying their efforts. Capello's short lecture and walk-out was a shock to a limp England side. John Terry called the reprimand "the worst" he had heard in the manager's two and a half years in charge.

Capello's use of anger as a managerial tool is a compelling psychological sub-plot to this World Cup. Hisbeef with Hart was that he kept lumping the ball back downfield when the England goalkeepers have been told to restart moves constructively, preferably by rolling a pass to a colleague. "Hart! Why? Why?" Capello barked, his arms spread. This upper-body gesture transmits irritation but is also imploring. It demands an answer and requires the subject to think about his actions. "Why?" is said to be Capello's favourite provocation.

Half-time in the recent Wembley friendly against Mexico produced similar fireworks. Before a non-competitive game against Trinidad and Tobago, Capello had warned his players he would stop training there and then and bring them back later to start from zero unless they started taking the session seriously. There is a tale of Emile Heskey's mobile ringing during a team meal and the manager throwing his own food tray in the air (that part is denied). Not disputed is the story of Glen Johnson's errant throw-ins, and how Capello reviewed them on DVD in his room, then chastised the Liverpool full-back for his inaccuracy in front of the team.

But explosions aimed at the entire squad speak of a more generalised frustration at England's sometimes slack demeanour. A pattern has crept in of slow starts and strict instructions not being adhered to. Against Platinum Stars, they had been told not to let attackers turn and to practise "pressing" the play, which requires more scuttling about than England were prepared to sign up for in a glorified training-ground exercise. This is what sent Capello off the high board: the suggestion of disobedience, or indolence, so close to Saturday's opening match against USA.

In every World Cup since 1998, England players have been questioned relentlessly about the "spirit in the camp". This game of rhetorical cat and mouse usually ends with them saying, "Yes, the spirit has never been better [if only to escape the inquisition]", which then leads to chest-beating on the eve of the opening fixture. Players who are unconvinced by the direction of the team or have some other gripe become actors in a familiar tableau of John Bull posturing.

Since the domestic season ended, England have yet to thump the drum. In fact some of Capello's players look more switched-off than at any time in recent memory. Instead of trying to scatter modest opposition with high-tempo play, many treated Monday's game as a kind of charity engagement. Absolved from blame were Ashley Cole, Aaron Lennon, Jamie Carragher, Wayne Rooney and Michael Dawson.

This absence of energy and intent put Capello into a fury. When he finally came off his seat to address the second-half replacements you could see him warning them not to offend him a second time. A witness says he told the team: "This is a football match – and you'd better start treating it like one." The next day he peeled away from training in its early stages to work with his goalkeepers, possibly to eradicate Hart's long-ball habit.

An alternative interpretation of England's easy-going posture is that they finally understand the art of peaking at the right moment in tournaments. This is the oldest of all England World Cup squads and therefore the most experienced. Most are Champions League regulars. To ask them to bust a gut now might be like expecting Manchester United to flog themselves against Honved when knock-out ties with Chelsea or Barcelona lurk further along the line.

This contradicts the momentum theory but is consistent with the way Italy and Germany, say, conserve resources and plot their way through tournaments. The difference is that Capello is not willing to give them the power to choose when they should obey his command to look busy at all times. Silvio Berlusconi once said of him at Milan: "Unfortunately Fabio has one small fault. It is that dialogue forms no part of his approach."